


Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

by Greta13



Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Character Study, Homophobia, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, POV Alex Manes, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Self-Reflection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-25
Updated: 2019-03-25
Packaged: 2019-12-07 06:50:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18231380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greta13/pseuds/Greta13
Summary: Michael Guerin is not the reason Alex Manes returned to Roswell, but he is the reason Alex has decided to stay.





	Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum

Michael Guerin wasn't the reason Alex had returned to Roswell. In fact, he had never expected to see Michael again. And while there had once been a small naive part of him that had hoped that their paths would cross again, his years in the war had hardened him up. Made him a more practical man, less prone to foolish daydreams and romance. There was no such thing as happily ever after. Nice guys always finish last in life, if they finish at all. Especially those in combat zones. Which is why when he returned to Roswell he hadn't even thought to look up Guerin, he had honestly thought that the other man would be long gone. He had imagined that Guerin would have a Ph.D. or two under his belt. He would be running his own labs, building rockets and preparing to visit the stars. Unlocking the secrets of the universe, the mysteries whose answers were held in the embers of a dying star, hidden in the rings of an undiscovered planet, or preserved deep in the ice of a streaming comet. Guerin would find it all, with his genius brain. He would be the beginning of a new era of exploration. He wouldn’t have any use for an emotionally stunted one legged closet case. Alex didn't come back for Michael Guerin. No, he returned to Roswell for another man, Master Sergeant Jesse Manes. 

Which is why he felt shocked speechless when a rough hand grabbed him by the arm and turned him around. Suddenly he found himself face to face with the love of his life, and all he could do was drink in the very sight of him. A man Alex had prepared himself to live without. But Guerin hadn’t left. He hadn’t gone off and become a brilliant scientist and followed his dreams. He had stayed. And it was Alex’s fault. What else could have been so life altering to cause Guerin to give up his dreams and stay in this suffocatingly small town? What other life-altering events could have happened that would have traumatized him so much, to make him give up his full-ride scholarship and slum it in a trailer out in the desert for a decade? Alex knew that it was because of their time together, because of that one night together. Because of Alex. That night had changed the course of Alex’s life completely. He had learned that the world didn’t care what a seventeen-year-old kid’s dreams were, that he hated guns and abhorred violence. It didn’t matter at all what he wanted, because he became a soldier anyway. Only he had been foolish enough to hope that fate had been kinder to another, that it had altered no more of Michael’s future than the use of his hand. 

And then Guerin had said all those things. And they had hurt. A lot. Like knives into his guarded heart. Walls that had never been effective against those hazel eyes and tousled curls. The images of Guerin with other people, having “a lot of casual sex” flashed unbidden through his mind. He knew that it was unrealistic to think that Guerin would abstain for all these years. Save himself for Alex, but Alex had. In the vain hope that they would reunite, and that his first love would become his last, his only. But maybe he had thought that their time together meant more than it had to Guerin. Or maybe after everything, Guerin had decided what the rest of the world already knew, that Alex Manes wasn’t worth it. It’s not like he could have read Alex’s mind and known that he had thought of him every day. That in his darkest hours, Guerin had been his light. So all he could reply was some lame joke about being only three-quarters of a man. He had a mission to complete, it was best that he not get distracted. Not let his guard down. And he walked away limping as they pain in his leg flared, and it would have caused him to stumble if the pain in his heart hadn’t outmatched it.

He had tried to ignore Guerin, not to dwell on the past. But that was kind of hard to accomplish at their ten-year high school reunion. It was all about the past. Half-forgotten memories made their way into the foreground of his mind, and waking nightmares lurked waiting to tear him apart until nothing but a scared boy remained. He was back in the high school gymnasium surrounded by faces that had once been familiar but now he wouldn’t have been able to discern them from a crowd of people he had never met. He limped through the crowd like a specter, unseen and unwanted. He felt so alone. It was like his time in Iraq had taken over his memory. He could close his eyes and remember every face, every name and every bloody death of those that had served with him. High school felt like a million years ago, he suddenly felt terribly out of place, alien, like he didn’t belong here now, but then again he never had.

The only people he thought about from high school were Maria, Liz, and Guerin. Michael Guerin, who despite Alex’s best efforts to ignore him, still stirred up such tumultuous feelings; joy and misery, vitality and ineptitude, passion and despair, potential and resignation, courage and weakness. He didn’t have time for this, didn’t have the strength, didn’t know if he could change enough or if he had changed too much, he didn’t deserve Michael. Because Michael was made for better things. Michael was better than cooking meth. Michael was better than living in an old beat up trailer. Michael was better than his long rap sheet implied. Michael deserved better than Alex. But Alex couldn’t help himself. He felt drawn to Michael, physically, mentally and emotionally. Like the very fabric of the universe was pulling them together. Even though he knew he shouldn’t, he couldn’t help himself. Because when he looked into Michael’s eyes, they were seventeen again. No limits. No responsibilities. Just the raw potential of their passion. And he could believe at that moment, gazing into those brilliant hazel eyes, they could reach the stars.

Almost completely against his conscious will, unsure of what he was going to say, he moved across the floor towards Guerin. Drawn to the other man by the connection they shared. Only to see that Guerin had his arm around the slender back of a beautiful leggy brunette. She stood and sauntered away, Guerin’s eyes lingering as she walked. Alex paused, caught by indecision. Until jealousy flared, giving him the final push. But it also made him mean. And Guerin responded in kind. It felt so strange, so different from their time together as kids before the horrors of reality dawned. It felt wrong using their words like weapons. Tension building between them, so palpable, Alex could feel it. Cutting into each other, like shrapnel, from the explosive mess that now seemed to be them. His guilt twisted his guts, stopping him from saying what he really wanted, and he found himself telling Guerin that he wasting his life. 

Yet that wasn’t true. It wasn’t Michael's fault. Not really. It was Alex’s fault. He was to blame that Michael never left, never went to college, never reached the stars. That he was cynical, cruel, bitter, a drunk and a criminal. A strangely familiar voice hissed inside Alex’s head that if he had kept his perverted self from seeking unnatural comfort, Michael would never have ended up this way. 

It killed him to look into the eyes of the man he loves so deeply and see the boy he once knew. The boy that had shared his dreams with him. The boy who had been bursting with potential. Look at him with such longing and tenderness. Only to be thrown back into the present day, and to see the damage he had caused. 

He had to stay focused. The mission comes first. He couldn't afford to get distracted or become vulnerable. The margin for error was closest of any operation he had run. Because he was on his own, a one-man team, facing an enemy that had decades of intimate knowledge of his weakness. One that had haunted his steps his whole life. His father would pay for what he did. He would pay for hurting the most perfect and beautiful part of Alex's existence, Michael. Alex was going to find what his father loved most in the world, and he was going to raze it to the ground. Torch it and let his father watch everything he ever loved go up in flames. He wanted to suck the marrow of life out of Jesse Manes and leave him broken and subsisting in abject misery. 

But then Guerin had kissed him at the reunion. Breathing into him warmth and life that had long ago faded to dust under the scorching sun of the arid desert. The kiss tasted of love, passion, tears, regret, loneliness, desperation, and hunger. Guerin awoke a part of him that night that Alex thought had died long ago, perhaps even forgotten about. And it felt..excruciating, like all of his nerves were exposed, vulnerable, and yet undeniably alive for the first time in years.

In the cold light of day, part of Alex wondered if it had been a figment of his imagination. His memory playing tricks. His dreams bleeding into reality as his nightmares often did. Sometimes he found himself back in the desert of the Middle East, back in combat, doing and witnessing terrible acts of violence. Even when he woke up, his mind kept feeding him the wrong information, until he stumbled and hit something that pulled him out and back into the here and now. The deserts of New Mexico, not Iraq. His cabin, not a cramped market or uncleared compound. One leg, not two. Exhausted and drenched in cold sweat he would crawl back to bed and hope to catch a few hours of sleep before dawn. Just another reason he would make a poor boyfriend.

He returned to Michael’s trailer the morning after the reunion, the eviction notice was just an excuse to be there. He wanted, no he needed to see if Michael had been changed by last night the way he had been. But he felt so torn, he couldn’t get distracted. He couldn’t let Michael put himself in the crossfire again. He couldn’t be the reason Michael got hurt, again. He was a man now, he had to fix his own problems. 

Alex tried to remain professional, ignore Guerin’s sarcastic teasing. But then Guerin's hand reached out and pulled him close by the front of his uniform, and it was all Alex could do to keep a blank face. But his mind was racing, his heart pounding. If Michael came any closer, Alex would lose all of his resolve. He firmly removed the other man’s hand and tried to put some distance between them. But it turned out that his trip had been in unnecessary. Michael either had truly forgotten or didn’t care to remember their kiss. Against his better judgment, that told him to stay away, he couldn’t help but feel hurt by this revelation.

Which was why he found himself going to the Wild Pony and seeking the numbing effects of alcohol and the companionship of Maria Deluca, one of the few people who had actually known him as just Alex Manes, not the decorated crippled war veteran. Being around her was fun and uncomplicated. It was an escape for both of them. Alex from being a soldier and Maria from being a caretaker to her ill mother. But the more time Alex spent with her, the more he realized that he needed to see Guerin. The man who he had once said he would stay forever in Roswell, if only he kept kissing him. The man who felt more like home to Alex than anything else. The man who was leaving and Alex didn’t even know where to.

Alex found Guerin loading the last few items into the back of his truck. He truly was leaving. And when asked about his destination and the other man had said Tennessee, Alex felt fear suddenly grip his heart. He knew that this was all his fault. But ever since they kissed, Alex couldn’t help but hope that against all odds, once he dealt with his father, that maybe there could be a ‘them’. That they could have a second chance. But if Guerin moved across the country… 

“Really?” Alex questioned.

“No.” Michael scoffed “No there are a couple people who still need me here. I’ll pick up work at the junkyard until I figure something else out.”

“Good.” Was all Alex could say.

“Good?” Michael responded, bitterness tainting the barely contained frustration. And yet something was breaking down. Walls crumbling as the very cosmos sang of their rightness.

“I spent the night with some old friends. Made me think about,” Alex paused, unsure. “I don’t know, who I was when this started before I went to war.”

“Where I stand nothing's changed” Michael declared, with a raw honesty that cut down into Alex’s very soul. And suddenly, as if the flood gates were flung open, everything poured out of Alex.

“Yeah including the way you look at me. And that’s a problem for me, Guerin, because every time you look at me I’m seventeen again and I forget that the last ten years even happened, and then you look away and I remember all over again. And it almost kills me every time!”

“I never look away. Not really.”

Suddenly Alex felt so overwhelmed like he can’t breathe because any sort of barrier or resistance he had was blown away by Guerin. Michael. And he couldn’t stay, not when he felt so wounded, raw, open and vulnerable. But his stupid leg and crutch made running away impossible, and before he knew it Michael caught up to him. 

“What are you doing?”

One simple question is all it takes, and Alex can’t resist any more . All of his resolve is melted away in the heat and warmth of Michael. And the spark that ignited in Alex, a pulse of life, when they kissed at the reunion surges and roars into a pyre of light and heat. Filling Alex with inexplicable life and desire. Warming his very core, spreading and growing, until it almost burns were his fingers grip and touch Michael. It is pain on the edge of pleasure. He needs more of Michael. He needs all of him. They come together, two halves, sinking into each other. Creating one. 

The weekend passes in passion and bliss as they map and relearn each other’s bodies and souls. All the ways their bodies have changed over a decade. Growth, definition, hardening, scarring. Michael’s old scar and all of Alex’s new and old scars. Michael’s eyes gaze deeply into Alex’s as his hands trace down his left leg. Pausing, looking for permission before touching. Asking for answers that Alex isn’t ready to give. Nightmares that Alex doesn’t want to let into their sanctuary. Because somehow despite all of the conflict and tension, here and now in this small trailer they have found a safe haven. Peace, comfort and belonging in each other’s arms. And Alex feels himself shifting and softening. He allows his armor to slowly fall away, leaving him exposed. But this openness goes both ways, he thinks, as Guerin has become more and more like the Michael he remembers. 

Time seems to stand still, and they bask in intimacy and closeness until reality finds them again, in the abrupt slam of a car door and the call of a female voice. Alex panics. Suddenly he’s seventeen again, but it’s dangerous and damning. And it’s his father, not Isobel, just outside the door. He can’t be discovered. He can’t see Michael hurt again. He can’t live through it again. Yet as soon as he says those words he regrets them because he sees the hardness return into Guerin’s eyes and he knows that he has failed again. He hurt Michael again. He wishes with all his soul that he could take them back.

So he tries to make it up that night to Guerin by doing one of the things that scare him the most. Going on a first date. In public. In front of the whole town and at least half of the base. He hopes that this will be enough for Guerin because it feels so out of his comfort zone and he feels so laid bare. He knows that the other man is frustrated by his secrecy and lack of public affection or acknowledgment of their relationship. But he doesn’t know how to explain his cowardice, the panic that paralyzes him. Fear that has gripped him for decades. He doesn’t know how to put into words that he has never been in a relationship before, never been on a date before. How does he tell the local ladies man that he has only ever kissed one person, only ever slept with one person and that he’s terrified that this will end the same way it did a decade ago. 

Of course, it doesn’t take long for it all to blow up in his face. He let his father into his head again, and those nightmares of holding Michael’s bloody dead corpse suddenly seemed too close to reality. He remembered his father’s decade-old promise to torture and kill Michael slowly in front of Alex if he ever found them so much as near each other again. And staring at his father in the dark of the night Alex had become that kid again, powerless and weak. And just like that, he knew he wasn’t ready to be in a relationship with Michael. He had wanted to be, desperately. But he wasn’t. He hadn’t dealt with his demons, not yet. He had battles to plan and a war to win before he could devote himself completely to the other man. Plus he still had a few months left before his contract was up, and like it or not his father was right. He couldn’t be in a relationship with Guerin and keep his job and security clearance, and he was too close to the finish line to stumble now. He would need every tool at his disposal, every wit, and faculty he possessed to take done his monster. Which is why he had to do this alone.

Breaking up with Michael was painful, no that wasn’t right. That didn’t adequately convey the soul tearing, heartbreaking, gut-wrenching, hollowing depression that was cleaving himself from the man he knew to be his soulmate. And so he threw himself back into his mission with no abandon. Spending countless hours searching; old records, the internet, and Roswell to track down what his father cherished. What mattered to the man who hated his own flesh and blood? Strangely enough, it seemed that legacy was at least part of the answer. Which was probably why he hated his weak and perverted son. 

Seeing Michael's name in the file, Alex came to a realization. He and Michael might never have the happily ever after he had hoped for. Because the danger that Michael was in extended way beyond his abusive bigotted homophobic father. Michael was an extraterrestrial being, there were legions of men who would exploit and use him if they had the chance. Which meant if Alex truly loved him, he would stay where he could help him the most, shield him the best. And while he hadn't returned to Roswell for Michael. Protecting and looking after Michael was the reason he would stay.

**Author's Note:**

> Title Translation: Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum - If you want peace, prepare for war.
> 
> Thank you for reading to the end. I must admit that up until episode 1x08, I had a hard time understanding Alex as a person. I felt his incredible connection to Michael, and I knew from the very beginning that he was noble and brave. I just didn't understand how it all fit together and translated into the man we saw. But with 1x08 I felt something click and suddenly I could see it all the way he did, and I fell in love with these two even more. I hope you enjoyed this work. Please feel free to offer any suggestions or constructive criticism!


End file.
